Read More

Instead, the Conservative amendment to the motion that the council does declare a climate emergency and that they adopts a key recommendation of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – for Devon to become carbon neutral by 2050 at the latest – and that the Environmental Performance Board to review and recommend what further corporate approaches can be taken, was agreed.

Read More

Caspar Hughes said: “The question isn’t whether we will stop global warming but whether we will act quickly enough to save civilisation. The window we need to act in is closing before our eyes and our children say we are burning their future away. We cannot afford not to become climate neutral as soon as possible. We are the first generation that is not able to offer as a safe future for our children.”

Video Loading

Video Unavailable

Click to playTap to play

The video will start in 8Cancel

Play now

His daughter Scarlett added: “What we are facing is worse than the war so please make it as easy as possible for us to endure that hardship that we will be facing in the future.”

Read More

Other speakers said that councillors needed to act now to safeguard the future and that the council had to act as if it was emergency as being carbon neutral by 2050 is far too late.

Cllr Hodgson, the Green party councillor for Totnes and Dartington, said that the there is a lot of evidence that supports the 2030 date for being carbon neutral. She said: “We need to recognise the issues with climate change and that we are heading towards extinction, and this is a call to action on the scale of a declaration of war. After 2030 it may be too late.

“We have to act now as there is no Planet B. We have already caused irrecoverable climate change and we have to declare a climate emergency.”

Cllr Gordon Hook backed her, saying: “The crisis of climate change is the greatest threat facing mankind today, and we should have climate change impacts at the bottom of every report that comes before us.”

Read More

Leader of the Labour Group, Cllr Rob Hannaford said: “There is hope at the end of the line, but hope needs a deadline, and even if we don’t get it entirely, we need the 2030 target deadline, as after all, it is a climate change emergency.”

Cllr Marina Asvachin said that climate change is not a surprise to us but we are leaving it to the last minute or too late do anything about it. She added that 2030 may not be soon enough to become carbon neutral by and that the council should actually be aiming to be carbon negative.

Cllr Roger Croad, Devon County Council’s cabinet member for the environment, told councillors though that the council has already reduced its emissions by 36 per cent since 2012/13 and has a target of 50 per cent by 2030, which exceeds the IPCC recommendation.

Video Loading

Video Unavailable

Click to playTap to play

The video will start in 8Cancel

Play now

He outlined that the council have already converted 25,000 streetlights to LED lighting, are using electric vehicles, have funding to install solar panels at County Hall, wants to install a solar farm on redundant landfill sites, has removed 100,000 single use plastics items annually from food outlets and has invested £14m in renewable energy.

But he said: “I cannot pledge to make the county of Devon carbon neutral by 2030, or anytime. Devon is made up of a myriad of organisations of businesses and every sector of society and the economy will have to help achieve stretching carbon targets – no one organisation is responsible.

Read More

“We will look to establish a task group to research the implications of becoming carbon neutral and then collectively set a target year for carbon neutrality that is viable, yet stretching.”

Cllr John Hart, leader of the council, added: “We are doing a lot on climate change and we are doing the right things, but we are being told that by 2030 we cannot make zero carbon. We have put together a recommendation that says what we can do and I can work with that.

“I cannot work with an arbitrary figure that may or may not be possible and everyone professionally tells me that it cannot be done and we cannot be carbon neutral by 2030.”

Read More

They then abstained on the Conservative amendment to the motion, which says that Devon County Council reaffirms its recognition of the scale and urgency of the global challenge from climate change, as documented by the latest Special Report of the IPCC, and declares a climate emergency and mandates the Environmental Performance Board to review and recommend what further corporate approaches can be taken through the DCC Climate Change Strategy and Corporate Energy Policy and to facilitate stronger Devon-wide action through collaboration at a strategic, community and individual level.